Six years of demography data for 11 reef coral species.

Scleractinian corals are colonial animals with a range of life-history strategies, making up diverse species assemblages that define coral reefs. We tagged and tracked ~30 colonies from each of 11 species during seven trips spanning 6 years (2009-2015) to measure their vital rates and competitive interactions on the reef crest at Trimodal Reef, Lizard Island, Australia. Pairs of species were chosen from five growth forms in which one species of the pair was locally rare (R) and the other common (C).

An Indo-Pacific coral spawning database.

The discovery of multi-species synchronous spawning of scleractinian corals on the Great Barrier Reef in the 1980s stimulated an extraordinary effort to document spawning times in other parts of the globe. Unfortunately, most of these data remain unpublished which limits our understanding of regional and global reproductive patterns. The Coral Spawning Database (CSD) collates much of these disparate data into a single place.

Interacting effects of habitat structure and seeding with oysters on the intertidal biodiversity of seawalls.

The construction of artificial structures, such as seawalls, is increasing globally, resulting in loss of habitat complexity and native species biodiversity. There is increasing interest in mitigating this biodiversity loss by adding topographic habitat to these structures, and/or seeding them with habitat-forming species. Settlement tile experiments, comparing colonisation of species to more and less complex habitats, have been used to inform eco-engineering interventions prior to their large-scale implementation.

Deciphering the nature of the coral-Chromera association.

Since the discovery of Chromera velia as a novel coral-associated microalga, this organism has attracted interest because of its unique evolutionary position between the photosynthetic dinoflagellates and the parasitic apicomplexans. The nature of the relationship between Chromera and its coral host is controversial. Is it a mutualism, from which both participants benefit, a parasitic relationship, or a chance association? To better understand the interaction, larvae of the common Indo-Pacific reef-building coral Acropora digitifera were experimentally infected with Chromera, and the impact on the host transcriptome was assessed at 4, 12, and 48 h post-infection using Illumina RNA-Seq technology.

Coral larvae are poor swimmers and require fine-scale reef structure to settle.

Reef coral assemblages are highly dynamic and subject to repeated disturbances, which are predicted to increase in response to climate change. Consequently there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying different recovery scenarios. Recent work has demonstrated that reef structural complexity can facilitate coral recovery, but the mechanism remains unclear.

Fecundity and the demographic strategies of coral morphologies.

Understanding species differences in demographic strategies is a fundamental goal of ecology. In scleractinian corals, colony morphology is tightly linked with many demographic traits, such as size-specific growth and morality. Here we test how well morphology predicts the colony size-fecundity relationship in eight species of broadcast-spawning corals.

The reproductive season of Acropora in Socotra, Yemen.

Determining when corals reproduce has clear management and economic implications. Here we document the reproductive condition of corals in the genus Acropora on the island of Socotra in Yemen during February 2014. Twenty percent of colonies (n = 143) contained mature gametes and 28% had immature gametes indicating that spawning will occur in both February and March in 2014, confirming previous anecdotal reports of coral spawning at this time in Socotra.

The role of light in mediating the effects of ocean acidification on coral calcification.

We tested the effect of light and PCO2 on the calcification and survival of Pocillopora damicornis recruits settled from larvae released in southern Taiwan. In March 2011, recruits were incubated at 31, 41, 70, 122 and 226 μmol photons m(-2) s(-1) under ambient (493 μatm) and high PCO2 (878 μatm). After 5 days, calcification was measured gravimetrically and survivorship estimated as the number of living recruits.

A pre-zygotic barrier to hybridization in two con-generic species of scleractinian corals.

Hybridization is often cited as a potential source of evolutionary novelty in the order Scleractinia. While hybrid embryos can be produced in vitro, it has been difficult to identify adult hybrids in the wild. Here, we tested the potential for hybridization between two closely related species in the family Fungiidae.

Chromera velia is endosymbiotic in larvae of the reef corals Acropora digitifera and A. tenuis.

Scleractinian corals occur in symbiosis with a range of organisms including the dinoflagellate alga, Symbiodinium, an association that is mutualistic. However, not all symbionts benefit the host. In particular, many organisms within the microbial mucus layer that covers the coral epithelium can cause disease and death.

Effects of diurnally oscillating pCO2 on the calcification and survival of coral recruits.

Manipulative studies have demonstrated that ocean acidification (OA) is a threat to coral reefs, yet no experiments have employed diurnal variations in pCO(2) that are ecologically relevant to many shallow reefs. Two experiments were conducted to test the response of coral recruits (less than 6 days old) to diurnally oscillating pCO(2); one exposing recruits for 3 days to ambient (440 µatm), high (663 µatm) and diurnally oscillating pCO(2) on a natural phase (420-596 µatm), and another exposing recruits for 6 days to ambient (456 µatm), high (837 µatm) and diurnally oscillating pCO(2) on either a natural or a reverse phase (448-845 µatm). In experiment I, recruits exposed to natural-phased diurnally oscillating pCO(2) grew 6-19% larger than those in ambient or high pCO(2).